Starting somewhere in the early Nineties, he seemed to disappear into his
own bizarre obsessions -- the muddled jazz-fusion spirituality of The
Rainbow Children (2001) and the instrumental meanderings of N.E.W.S. (2003) being only the most recent excesses. But then, late last year, his
election to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame made you remember just how potent,
irresistible and groundbreaking a force he once was. Then, his commanding
performance with Beyonce to open the Grammys proved that he could still thrill
in such a high-pressure spot. And that solo on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" at
the Hall of Fame induction ceremony? Devastating.

Now comes Musicology, as appealing, focused and straight-up satisfying
an album as Prince has made since who can remember when. It's open, easygoing
and inclusive, the sort of album anyone might like. Most notably, Musicology restores
a refreshing sense of songcraft to Prince's writing. Rather than seeming
like mere sketches, as so much of his recent work has, each track on the
album is distinct, coherent and rigorously uncluttered -- whether it's a
bluesy lament such as "On the Couch," a lovelorn meditation like "A Million
Days" or a stop-time jam such as "If Eye Was the Man in Ur Life." And the
singer makes it clear that he has learned that rigor from the masters. "Wish
I had a dollar for every time you say/'Don't you miss the feeling music gave
you back in the day?' " he sings over an insinuating bass line on the title
track. Then, like Arthur Conley calling out to the R&B pantheon in his 1967
hit "Sweet Soul Music," Prince names names: " 'Let's Groove,' 'September'
-- Earth, Wind and Fire/'Hot Pants,' by James/Sly's gonna take you higher."

Now forty-five, Prince realizes -- and repeatedly declares -- that his
tastes are "old-school." On "Reflection," one of several ballads that float
by on a sweet musical breeze reminiscent of Stevie Wonder, memory sweeps
Prince away: "Remember all the way back in the day/When we would compare
whose Afro was the roundest?" Moments like this rescue Prince from his eccentricities
and make him recognizable again. On the sizzling funk track "Life 'O' the
Party," he wryly mimics his old rival Michael Jackson ("My voice is getting
higher/I ain't never had my nose done"), as if to emphasize his distance
from the only pop-culture figure perceived as weirder than he is.

Its relative clarity aside, Musicology is still a Prince album,
so it hardly lacks bold ideas. "Cinnamon Girl" borrows a title from Neil
Young and a deft hook from the mid-Eighties to explore racial and ethnic
differences in a post-9/11 world. Other songs sprinkle offhand references
to the Iraq war, the Fourteenth Amendment, the Bible, numerology and the
corrupting power of greed. Prince -- who is now a Jehovah's Witness -- has
dialed his trademark sexual explicitness way down. But that restraint works,
too. With its sinuous grooves and effortless swing -- not to mention Prince's
seductive vocals -- Musicology simmers with a submerged erotic tension.

Finally, of all things, the album is a hymn to marriage -- not the frisky
fantasy stuff of "Let's Pretend We're Married" but the real domestic deal. "Did
we remember to water the plants today?" the singer asks on "Reflection," Musicology's
closing song, finding the secret life of love in a quotidian detail. That's
an example of how Prince, who claimed that Musicology would take everyone
back to school, is really the one who has understood an essential lesson:
Less can be so much more.

(RS 947, April 29, 2004)

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
Musicology Prince

Reviewed by David Browne

During his '80s heyday, Prince set a high creative bar for himself, and
in retrospect, it's astonishing how he vaulted over it album after album.
But after 15 years of self-indulgent and justly forgotten records, that bar
has fallen so low that it's tempting to hear the fat-free, melodic Musicology as a beacon of hope. Its skeletal funk never grows too knotty for its own
good, and there are no overtly Christian themes, no meandering fusion instrumentals,
and, thankfully, no rapping.

On his current tour of the same name, Prince
unabashedly vies for his fans' old love by playing a hits-heavy set. ''Musicology''
is a suitable companion
to the tour: Most of the songs, while new, sound old. ''A Million Days''
and ''Call My Name'' are exquisite slow-jam cream puffs, but they're basically
variations on ballads he's written before. Similarly, calls to the dance
floor like the title track and ''Life 'O' the Party'' are spry but rote,
and his shout-outs to Dr. Dre and Missy Elliott only point out how dated
Prince's funk has become.

Proving he can still delight and surprise, Prince
ponders the fate of an ethnic woman in the U.S. during wartime in the poppin'
fresh ''Cinnamon
Girl,'' demonstrates he can keep up with modern R&B in ''What Do
U Want Me 2 Do?'' and works himself up into righteous anticorporate indignation
in ''Dear
Mr. Man.'' But following a decade in which he strove to avoid becoming
a nostalgia item, the retro-leaning ''Musicology'' (and its accompanying
tour)
sounds as if Prince is less interested in fighting Mr. Man than in giving
in to him. Grade: B-

USA TODAY

Prince regains his R&B throne on 'Musicology'

Prince, Musicology (* * *1⁄2 out of four) After years of scattershot
releases, moniker confusion, industry battles and a retreat into his self-contained
Internet kingdom, Prince can again be formally known as relevant. Musicology is a potent reminder of his undiminished skills as a soul crooner, rock guitarist
and pop songsmith. Rehabilitating the vintage-vibed funk/rock of his heyday,
Prince is focused and ferocious in a dozen concisely drawn tunes that summon
his feverish impulses but never lapse into shapeless jams. Newfound religious
faith has curtailed his randy nature, yet a sensual humidity permeates every
space, from the blistering funk in Life 'o' the Party to the warmth of ballad
Reflection to the snaking blues of On the Couch. In the title track's heady
swirl of old-school rhythms, Prince pays homage to yesteryear's brotherhood
of R&B greats while re-establishing his role as the fraternity's president. —Edna
Gundersen

The Guardian
April 16, 2004

PrinceMusicology
****

Prince is an artist that people desperately want to be good. Someone,
somewhere will always suggest that his latest offering is a return to
mid-80s form, even if, as in recent years, his latest offering is a jazz
concept
album
about the Jehovah's Witnesses. This time, however, even Prince
seems convinced he is back in shape. The opening track ends with snippets
of
his old hits,
while titles such as Life O' The Party offer bullish echoes
of his glory years.

At its best, Musicology has music to match his confidence: taut
funk tracks and the lushly crafted pop of Cinnamon Girl and
A Million Days,
the latter
frankly the best song Prince has written in 10 years. It wobbles
towards the end, with Dear Mr. Man, which unveils Prince's
jaw-dropping anti-Bush
political strategy -- don't bother voting, write a letter of
complaint instead -- but Musicology strongly suggests Prince has finally
roused himself from
a decade-long self-indulgent torpor.

NME

Prince / Musicology

There must have been some kind of weird astral alignment going on back
in 1958. That year saw the births of not one, not two, but three certifiable
American pop geniuses in the shapes of Michael Jackson, Madonna Louise
Ciccione
and Prince Rogers Nelson - a superhuman triumvirate who by the end of the
1980s had amassed more cultural currency and broken more new musical ground
than any act since The Beatles. Yet, just as they were tied together by
birth, so were they tied together by failure in the wilderness years of
the 1990s
- Jackson was the first to go, as child abuse allegations and their subsequent
out-of-court settlements crippled his once-infallible empire. Madonna contented
herself with an embarrassing movie career and an even more embarrassing
conversion to full-blown Anglophile. However, it was Prince's own career
implosion that
was the most wilful, down to bloody-mindedness rather than dubious accusations
or dubious acting.

Prince spent the 1990s on a musical journey that he found
his fanbase was unwilling to undertake with him, encompassing as it did
ridiculous name changes
and fairly abominable records. It was a lesson in how to waste talent
from arguably the most talented US pop star in decades. It's a lesson that
still
may not yet be over; as, according to reports, the one-time Sexy MF is
now simply the Infuriating MF, spending his spare time going door to
door in
his native Minneapolis handing out pamphlets for the Jehovah's Witnesses.

And
so the battle lines are drawn for 'Musicology', Prince's first major-label
album in almost a decade, and the long-rumoured return to 'proper'
pop music - you know, no symbols, no pulpit preaching, no triple-CD musical
odysseys,
that sort of thing. And on that level, 'Musicology' works perfectly
well.
It's a welcome return to the music that made him a superstar, and it's
not just wishful thinking to say that 'Musicology''s better moments
are worthy
of a place on era-defining classics like 'Purple Rain' or 'Sign O'
The Times'. Sadly, it is just wishful thinking to harbour hope that 'Musicology'
could
be Prince's first wholly satisfying album since his '80s heyday.

It
starts off well. The James Brown-fuelled funk of the title track and the
cinematic sweep of 'A Million Days' are the best things he's
done
in ages
- the latter in particular seeming certain to yield his first actual
hit in years. Bookending the dirty jamming of the brilliantly-titled
'Illusion,
Coma, Pimp & Circumstance', as an opening salvo it's sexy, sassy
and funky - sexier, sassier and funkier than any album by a hardline
Jehovah's
Witness has any right to be - and the funk-rock-soul amalgam that
made him so exciting in the first place has rarely sounded so potent.

Sadly,
it can't last. Though untroubled by the pretentiousness that
has marred his recent releases, too often on 'Musicology' Prince
reverts to formula
as opposed to inverting it - the schmaltzy identikit R&B of 'Call
My Name' sounds like a Boyz II Men B-side written to order by Lionel
Richie.
It's honestly that shit. 'Dear Mr Man''s hamfisted social commentary
not only feels laboured, it's spectacularly out of sync with an album
that's
completely unconcerned with its themes.

Yet there's real genius at
work here - from 'If Eye Was The Man In Ur Life''s inspired bling-bling
piano lines, to the slow-burning,
seductive 'On The
Couch' (sample lyric: "I wanna go down south, baby") which
serves to remind us that while there are Pygmy tribes in Africa who
have a sly
snigger at his height, he remains a giant of sex, with come-to-bed
falsettos and
the original superstar booty.

Ultimately, 'Musicology' is a kind of
flawed redemption, neither inspired enough to be a true classic,
nor insipid enough to make
it unworthy
of your attention. There are moments on here, however fleeting,
that prove
Prince
Rogers Nelson will never lose the ability to surprise and astonish,
and there are moments that likewise suggest he'll never lose the
ability to frustrate
and confound his audience. Nevertheless, at least one of the class
of
'58's most prodigal of sons has finally returned to something like
form.

Barry Nicolson

Rating: 6

NEW YORK TIMESApril 19, 2004

Prince Returns, Trading Rebellion for Gentle Jams
By KELEFA SANNEH

When figure skaters turn professional, what they're really doing is retiring:
they keep touring, drawing fans to exhibitions around the country, but
their days as serious competitors are over. Something similar happened
to Prince
after he split with his record company, Warner Brothers, almost a decade
ago. He kept touring and releasing CD's, but he seemed to withdraw into
his own private kingdom; in the cutthroat pop music industry he was no
longer
a competitor.

Over the last few months he has changed course again, making
a series of public appearances to build anticipation for "Musicology," his
return to the world of big-money pop. The album will be released tomorrow
on Prince's own NPG label, but it is being manufactured and distributed
by Columbia Records.

It is Prince's good or bad fortune to be making
his comeback at a time when pretenders are everywhere. André 3000,
Pharrell Williams and D'Angelo have invented their own versions of the
Prince persona; Missy
Elliott and
Erykah Badu have chased his spirit across different genres and eras;
producers like Felix da Housecat, Daft Punk and Brooks have updated his
synthetic
thwack for the dance floor.

What's most disappointing about "Musicology," then,
is the way Prince reacts to all this sincere flattery: he doesn't. The
CD is a casual
exhibition of Princeliness, stocked with a handful of old tricks but
no new ones. As usual, the songs are "produced, arranged, composed
and per4med by Prince," with a few exceptions, and it sounds like
the work of a formerly insatiable star who has figured out how to satisfy
his own musical
ambitions.

The album's first song is the title track, a dose of anorexic
funk in which Prince adds nostalgic chatter to a gristly bass line. And
there's
a winsome,
wispy ballad, "Call My Name," in which vague political commentary
(transcribed, as usual, according to the same orthographical rules that
prevail at your local middle school) melts into bedroom talk: "What's
the matter with the world 2day? Land of the free? Somebody lied!/They
can bug
my phone,
peep around my home, they'd only c u and me makin' love inside."

Mainly,
though, "Musicology" is given over to gentle jams that
never really get going. Prince sounds comfortable and contented throughout,
which might be part of the problem. In 2001 he released a much better
CD, "The
Rainbow Children" (NPG), which used expansive and unpredictable
jazz-funk tracks to tell the tale of a rebellious (and, not coincidentally,
funky)
tribe fighting against the bland and oppressive rulers of the Digital
Garden. The new album could use a bit of that fighting spirit.